TVN: “A pillar, and growth asset”

Fast-growing broadcaster Scripps Networks Interactive says it is looking for expansion possibilities out of Poland’s TVN. Scripps bought a 52.7 per cent controlling stake in TVN in March 2015 for $614 million.

Scripps’ chairman & CEO Kenneth Lowe, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Brokers conference September 17 in New York, praised TVN’s CEO Markus Tellenbach, and said that it wanted to do all the things in Poland that Scripps had achieved in the USA. “All of those touch points that we’ve done so well with consumers [in the US], we think we can duplicate there and that also gives us an opportunity to use that as a testing ground, as I said earlier, to spread across Europe and more on a global basis.”

“[TVN] do an enormous amount of original content,” said Lowe. “They will take formats, very successful formats and then take them and create Polish versions of those. They’ve had a lot of success. So I think in that particular instance, the more diverse that TVN has become the better investment it’s been for us as opposed to just lifestyle networks, which we continue to do globally, but they can’t move the needle in a way that this acquisition of TVN in Poland has. So we’re very excited about that opportunity and to grow our international revenue.”

Lowe added: “We saw [TVN as] a very unique opportunity, because it’s very rare that you can get this kind of an asset that you can actually go out and buy it all at one time. But we continue to be very aggressive on launching our lifestyle channels around the world.”